MARY KRAMER: Isn't it time to talk about race?

People in and around Detroit are expecting a lot. So much that newly elected Mayor Mike Duggan sounds like he is trying to manage expectations in some of his public remarks.

Duggan will be able to improve delivery of some city services in tangible ways fairly quickly, in part through better management and in part with money freed up by debt obligation relief through bankruptcy.

There are other good things to expect this year: The M-1 Rail project will finally break ground. Woodward Avenue will be torn up to create the kind of purgatory only commuters who generally travel I-96 into downtown Detroit will understand.

We expect Gov. Snyder will run for re-election. What would help him most? Progress in Detroit and a few big wins with jobs — especially from employers who might not have given Michigan a look were it not for its right-to-work legislation.

But here's an expectation of what should happen and probably won't: I expect we will lose the chance in this Detroit fiscal crisis to address the elephant in the room: race relations in Southeast Michigan.

One of the biggest surprises to consultants and others swooping into Detroit to try and resolve the city's fiscal mess may well be how much race shapes everything, yet is rarely mentioned except by those who make a living in racial politics.

No matter where you turn, there are obstacles — spoken and unspoken — to finding regional solutions to Southeast Michigan's long-term problems, which happen to include Detroit's problems. Detroit is part of the region. Its health and welfare affects everyone here.

During the campaign, Duggan didn't talk much about race. But in his interview as our 2013 Newsmaker of the Year, he talks about his experience at the Detroit Medical Center as a place where race took a back seat to other priorities.

"If a patient comes in with a heart problem, it doesn't matter if he's white or black," Duggan told Crain's Tom Henderson. (See story, Page 1.) "It doesn't matter if the nurse is white, black, Hispanic or Arabic. It doesn't matter what the doctor is. I spent nine years in an environment where people saw each other as people first, and stereotypes second."

That's what crisis can do. Maybe Detroit's crisis could produce a frank conversation — convened by leaders who want the entire region to be stronger — not to cast blame, but to recognize what roles race plays now and in our future.